This is not a sentiment often expressed in a national newspaper, but put yourself in the brogues of Stephen Hester, the boss at Royal Bank of Scotland. His investment bankers are set to rake in a bumper profit of £6bn this year and want a decent bonus for their efforts. To satisfy their demands, there is a bonus pool of around £1.5bn. And if Alistair Darling vetoes that sum, many of the best and brightest at RBS will go down the road to Goldman Sachs or Barclays.

That is the Hester line – and, as George Orwell observed of a different argument: "One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool." For a start, the primary reason RBS and the other banks are doing so well is because they have received the biggest state subsidy in history. As a recent Bank of England study points out, the governments of the UK, the US and the eurozone have together thrown around £8.8 trillion – or about a quarter of global GDP – at the struggling banks. High rewards for high risk, runs the City orthodoxy. But the bailouts, the state guarantees and the Bank of England's pumping of money into the financial system means that markets are almost a one-way bet. Never have so few traders owed so much to so many taxpayers.

So much for the deserving super-rich. Were Mr Darling to make the arguments above and invite RBS directors to go, he would meet very little opposition, even from the City. But what should he actually do? The government has not had a good war on bankers' bonuses. First, it has been all over the place. At the end of last year the Treasury allowed RBS bosses to pay out £1bn in bonuses, yet 12 months later it is kicking up a fuss about a sum in the same ballpark. Second, Peter Mandelson and Paul Myners are good at stern rhetoric, but terrible at strict policy. Lord Myners cannot talk about shareholder responsibility when he has just accepted Sir David Walker's review into corporate governance – which makes almost no demands on pension-fund managers to monitor pay. This is merely delegating responsibility. Finally, there is a basic and big problem: the government cannot have one law for the traders at RBS and another for Barclays and Goldmans. That merely handicaps a taxpayer-owned company and helps private sector rivals.

All the banks are enjoying unprecedented state support and all are set to pay big bonuses this Christmas. This is unearned money; the only sensible policy is for Mr Darling to impose a windfall tax on all of the banks' bonus pools in next week's pre-budget report – and put the money towards keeping youngsters in jobs. Logical and popular, this could be the bankers' thank-you present to taxpayers for saving their jobs.